This was an unusual victory in the sense that I managed to win whilst defending for most of the game.

Early doors, scouting didn't go great. I lost one of my two dogs at a bridge, then the other to his garrisoned farm building (he was top right to my bottom left). This meant he had the advantage of the airport, plus a better idea of what was going on.

Fortunately, I could just see the edge of his war factory - so I knew what he was going for. Straight tanks. I managed to make a miner straight out, which probably proved pivotal in the context of the game.

I managed to hold back his initial advances with a combination of fodder and my own tanks. He never had quite enough to attack me, but sat threatingly in the village, garrisoned with all his free conscripts.

I chose to keep a beady eye on him, whilst stretching left towards the gems quite early. This allowed me to get a second war factory up quite quickly - so I was able to catch up his tanks numbers, if not outnumber him through a better economy.

I continued my stretch up to the ore field in the middle, building a battle lab and nuclear reactor. Nothing was going on at this point - our forces were both keeping an eye on each other, awaiting battle.

With money rolling in and now having the comfort of a few extra tanks, I built a kirov. This prompted my opponent to spend an awful lot of money on anti-air, including flak troopers.

While this happened, the tank battle took place. He tried to attack, but a few well placed desolators did for a large number of his conscripts. With my extra tank numbers and fodder, I pushed him right to the back of the village - splitting my tanks and sending a group across the botton bridge to his MCV (which he had moved to the middle of the right). They destroyed it with ease, whilst my other tank group retreated to the base. My Kirov flew over the river at this point, managing to take out a refinery before being shot down.

I lost the tanks with which I had destroyed the MCV, but not before killing a few more of his tanks. At this point, I just kept plowing tanks out. He was doing much the same, but then started building a lot of desolators. With all his spare flak tracks, this could have posed a problem. I qued six or seven drones. I also sent my MCV north to build a refinery off the far gem patch at this point.

After a minute or two, I had exhausted all the ore on my side of the map - save for that regrowing on the main fields. I continued to pour out tanks. He tried to attack, but my desolators kept pushing him back. It wasn't really a problem anyway - I had far more tanks, I just had to avoid his desolators.

He ran straight into all my drones when he ran away from my tanks retaliating. This caused him a lot of damage - too many of his unit were affected for him to know what to shoot at. He retreated his small tank number back to the top of the map.

A few minutes prior to this, I had built an Iron Curtain. It was now ready. I employed it on a large group of my tanks sat outside the middle bridge, then charged into his base - destroying the most of it with little resistance save for a few desolators. I sent a split back to my original base to deal with what was left of his tank force.

After a few more moments, it was all over. A good opponent who graciously accepted defeat, unlike some of the other idiots I played tonight.